Is your message reaching your customers?

16,000.

That’s the number of advertisements people saw per day in 2010, double the amount seen in 2007 and up from 2,000 per day back in 1978.

With the ability to fast forward through DVR’d TV commercials, block ads on the web, and unsubscribe from email lists, consumers are sick of advertising. More specifically, they are sick of NON-RELEVANT advertising.

My guest today is Sandra Zoratti, an author and VP of Marketing for Ricoh. She manages a business from former IBM and Ricoh companies in Boulder, CO, has built and launched businesses from the ground up, and is a thought leader in the field of Precision Marketing.

For the full interview, press play above to listen to the full podcast, or subscribe and download via iTunes.

Questions for Sandra and topics we talk about:

– You’ve worked at some massive companies over the years, including IBM, Avery, and Westinghouse. How did that prepare you for some of the topics you talk about in the book?

– Talk about the book process itself… Why did you decide to write it, and what was the process like working with you co-author, Lee Gallagher?

– What about from the business side? You state that the average tenure for a CMO is just 18 months… it seems like whatever they are doing isn’t working and they are being changed up rather quickly. What can marketers do to effectively reach consumers?

Talk about some of the trends you are seeing in the marketplace:
– Business insights and analytics
– The explosion of “Big Data”
– How this all ties in to mobile
– How businesses can harness these strategies without allocating huge resources

– Talk about the three steps for precision marketing:
Collecting data, acting on it, then measuring results.

Case Study Examples

– Tesco Grocery, the UK grocery store that introduced the customer loyalty program
– Moneyball, how a baseball team used unconventional stats to outmaneuver the competition
– Caesar’s Palace Casinos, how precision marketing revealed the fact that .15% of their customers generate 12% of revenue, yielding a cost savings of $15-$20 million through analytics

Then we wrap up with a series of rapid fire, lifestyle questions:
– The best career move Sandra has made so far, and how has it paid off
– Her most vital piece of technology
– The 3 activities that help her maintain work/life balance (you’ll never guess one of them)
– Her favorite under-rated travel destination, and where on the planet she’d most like to visit
– The most valuable piece of advice for people looking to start their own company or write a book

Learn more about Precision Marketing

Sponsor message: Freshbooks Fresh Take of the Week
The overall takeaway of the book for me, was to use precision and be highly targeted in your marketing. The correlation I made is to do the same with a job search. This is a particular problem with new grads when looking for a job, which often use the shotgun approach. The fresh, and better way to do this, is to be more of a sniper, where you use precision and are highly targeted in your job search.